The Moon will pass close to
the Sun and become lost in the Sun's glare for a few days.

The Moon's orbital motion
carries it around the Earth once every four weeks, and as a result its phases cycle from
new moon, through first quarter, full moon and last quarter, back to new moon
once every 29.5 days.

This motion also means that the Moon travels more than 12° across
the sky from one night to the next, causing it to rise and set nearly an hour
later each day. Click
here for more information about the Moon's phases.

At new moon, the Earth, Moon and Sun all lie in a roughly straight line, with
the Moon in the middle, appearing in front of the Sun's glare. In this
configuration, we see almost exactly the opposite half of the Moon to that
which is illuminated by the Sun, making it doubly unobservable because the side
we see is unilluminated.

Over coming days, the Moon will rise and set an hour later each day, becoming
visible in the late afternoon and dusk sky as a waxing crescent which sets soon
after the Sun. By first quarter, in a week's time, it will be visible until
around midnight.

Its day-by-day progress is charted below, with all times are given below in
Ashburn local time.

Date

Sunsets at

Moonsets at

Altitude of Moonat sunset

Direction of Moonat sunset

24 Jun 2017

20:34

19:53

-12°

north-west

25 Jun 2017

20:35

20:58

-2°

north-west

26 Jun 2017

20:35

21:56

8°

west

27 Jun 2017

20:35

22:46

18°

west

28 Jun 2017

20:35

23:30

27°

west

29 Jun 2017

20:35

00:06

35°

west

30 Jun 2017

20:35

00:06

40°

south-west

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 4°03'of the Sun, in the constellation Orion.
The exact positions of the Sun and Moon will be:

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so
may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.